Circulation of Knowledge - Transregional Studies

The inter-institutional project "Circulation of Knowledge. Transregional Studies" was launched by scholars from a range of different disciplines. Its goal was to use the stock of regionally specific competencies in Berlin's research landscape for new forms of scholarly exchange in order to try out approaches that focus on processes of transregional and transcultural exchange. The project was funded by the State (Land) of Berlin (2004-2009) and receives organizational support from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

The common research interest of the members was in the circulation of knowledge and cultural transfer processes in the field of tension of mutual relations and interconnection. The emphasis was on non-European societies that have been shaped in respectively specific ways by interaction with Europe and the United States, as well as among each other - and which in turn have also affected the West. In this way, a central dimension of social and cultural globalization came into view, without reproducing Eurocentric assumptions about the transfer of knowledge.

The goal was to develop new forms of cooperation, tied to a high-level conceptualization, in order to exert a broadly visible effect on the regionally oriented disciplines in the Federal Republic of Germany.